The Network Architecture Lab announces a series of evening panels
entitled “Discussions on Networked Publics “at Columbia University's
Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation's Studio-X
Soho Facility to investigate the changing conditions of the media,
architecture, and urbanism today.

The mass audience and mass
media analyzed by the Frankfurt School are long gone. As digital media
and network technologies are increasingly integral with everyday life,
the public is transforming. Today we inhabit multiple, overlapping and
global networks such as user forums, Facebook, Flickr, blogs, and
wikis. In lieu of watching TV, listening to the radio, or playing
records, we text each other, upload images to social networking sites,
remix videos, write on blogs and make snarky online comments. The media
industry, which just a decade ago seemed well established, is in flux,
facing its greatest challenge ever. If we can be certain of anything,
it’s that as Karl Marx wrote, "all that is solid melts into air."

In
2008, we published Networked Publics (MIT Press), a book produced in
collaboration with the University of Southern California's Annenberg
Center for Communication examining how the social and cultural shifts
centering around new technologies have transformed our relationships to
(and definitions of) place, culture, politics, and infrastructure.

“Discussions
on Networked Publics” seeks to explore the ramifications of these
changes, giving particular attention to architecture and cities. In a
set of five panels—culture, place, politics, infrastructure, and
network society—we will explore the consequences of networked publics
in detail. Our goal will be to come to an understanding of the changes
in culture and society and how architects, designers, historians, and
critics might work through this milieu.

The first panel is on
culture. Our panelists will address the question of how media,
architecture, and architectural media are changing in the context of
networked publics.